istmas dinner fund, the forlorn brute whose
wife and children have fled from him, and who spends his time between
the police-cells and the resorts of the vilest. If you could know the
names of the tramps who yell and make merry over their supper in the
murky kitchen, you would find that people of high consideration would be
touched very painfully could they be reminded of the existence of
certain relatives. Degraded, degraded are they all! And why?

The answer is brief, and I have left it until last, for no particular
elaboration is needed. From most painful study I have come to the
conclusion that nearly all of our degraded men come to ruin through
idleness in the first instance; drink, gambling, and other forms of
debauch follow, but idleness is the root-evil. The man who begins by
saying, "It's a poor heart that never rejoices," or who refers to the
danger of making Jack a dull boy, is on a bad road. Who ever heard of a
worker--a real toiler--becoming degraded? Worn he may be, and perhaps
dull to the influence of beauty and refinement; but there is always some
nobleness about him. The man who gives way to idleness at once prepares
his mind as a soil for evil seeds; the universe grows tiresome to him;
the life-weariness of the old Romans attacks him in an ignoble form,
and he begins to look about for distractions. Then his idleness, from
being perhaps merely amusing, becomes offensive and suspicious; drink
takes hold upon him; his moral sense perishes; only the husks of his
refinement remain; and by and by you have the slouching wanderer who is
good for nothing on earth. He is despised of men, and, were it not that
we know the inexhaustible bounty of the Everlasting Pity, we might
almost think that he was forgotten of Heaven. Stand against idleness.
Anything that age, aches, penury, hard trial may inflict on the soul is
trifling. Idleness is the great evil which leads to all others.
Therefore work while it is day.

_September, 1888._

_A REFINEMENT OF "SPORTING" CRUELTY._

I firmly believe in the sound manhood of the English people, and I know
that in any great emergency they would rise and prove themselves true
and gallant of soul; but we happen for the time to have amongst us a
very large class of idlers, and these idlers are steadily introducing
habits and customs which no wise observer can regard without solemn
apprehensions. The simple Southampton poet has told us what "idle hands"
are apt to do under